We've been hearing about the alleged health benefits of eating dark chocolate for the last decade or so, including lower blood pressure and improved cholesterol levels. Those claims are about to be put to an exhaustive test in a study of 18,000 adults in Boston and Seattle. But instead of eating chocolate bars every day, the study participants will take capsules containing concentrated amounts of the bio-active chemicals in cocoa beans, known as cocoa flavanols.
If study results are consistent with previous studies showing health benefits of eating cocoa flavanols, it will be a semi-sweet outcome for chocolate lovers. Generally, the higher the level of cocoa, the less sweet the chocolate -- though even chocolate with 72% cocoa contains in the neighborhood of 240 calories per serving, including 10 grams of sugar and 18 grams of fat.
The study participants will theoretically get all of the good stuff without the extra calories from fat and sugar. Each participant will take two flavorless capsules a day containing 750 milligrams of cocoa flavanols (or dummy pills for those in the control group) for four years. Over that time, participants' heart health will be monitored to determine if the mega dose of cocoa does what previous, smaller studies indicate. To ingest the same amount of cocoa flavanols as the study participants would require eating almost five bars of dark chocolate a day.
Cocoa is thought to benefit heart health by acting as a vasodilator, meaning it triggers relaxation of muscle cells within blood vessel walls. Relaxed blood vessels naturally widen, resulting in greater blood flow and decreased blood pressure.
The latest research is being funded by Mars Inc., makers of M&Ms and other candies, and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. Mars co-sponsoring the study will raise red flags with critics, but it’s worth noting that the company has funded cocoa flavanol research since the 1990s, and much of what we know about the possible benefits of cocoa has emerged from Mars-supported studies.
You can find David DiSalvo on Twitter @neuronarrative and at his website, The Daily Brain. His latest book is Brain Changer: How Harnessing Your Brain’s Power To Adapt Can Change Your Life.